All Hat and No Cattle

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Tue, 15 Jul 2008 08:09:05 GMT <== Politics ==>

Sara Robinson at Blog for Our Future - Ms. Robinson's dad was a real cowboy, unlike GW Bush, who has soiled the name. [tmm]

My dad, who died six years ago today, was a cowboy. A real one, complete with beat-up Stetson and muddy ropers and a Ford pickup and an ancient blanket-lined Levi's jean jacket that smelled of manure, leather, horse sweat, and tobacco -- the distinctive aroma of all cowboys, the one that's rubbed so deep into their sunburned hides that it doesn't come out no matter how long they spend in the shower or how much Old Spice they try to mask it with. Dad's been on my mind a lot this week -- well, Dad, Jefferson, and George W. Bush.

...

Daddy hated George Bush. Loathed him to the marrow of his cancer-ridden bones. He'd spent a good portion of his 32-year teaching career imparting American history and civics to high school students, becoming a California Master Teacher along the way. Jefferson was his personal hero; that quote about the tree of liberty needing frequent watering by the blood of patriots and tyrants a favorite quote. A child of the Roosevelt era (he was born just three weeks before the 1932 election), he knew a corporate royalist when he saw one. And he also knew from Day One that this guy was trouble -- that, in fact, that he was likely to bring about the biggest Constitutional crisis in the history of the country. "America may not survive him," he warned me. "You may live to see the nation's last days."

But in Dad's eyes, Bush's biggest crime was what that dude (back home in Miles City, "dude" was an epithet that started fistfights -- it was calling someone "all hat and no cattle" in the most derogatory way possible) had done to the image of cowboys, both in America and abroad. To Dad and his friends, the cowboy code was sacred and absolute. Guys who spend weeks out in the wilderness with large quantities of other people's capital have to be trustworthy, honest, and self-sufficient. You mess up, you fess up. You take on a responsibility, you see it through to the end. You are awe-struck by women, tender with children, and hospitable to strangers as long as they're hospitable to you. You don't start fights -- but you better be able to finish them. To that end, you're proficient with your firearm; but you never, ever fire first unless lives hang in the balance. You are modest, underpaid, usually broke -- and number yourself among the luckiest people in the world anyway.

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Submitted by Lenny Ladner on Sun, 20 Jul 2008 01:17:33 GMT

Your dad was a good guy. I would have liked to have met him.
Sorry another good American has bit the dust.

Lenny Ladner

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Government doesn't work. Never did. Never will. Can't. But there are lots of good people. Love them.

-- Bill St. Clair

The Atlanta Declaration

Every man, woman, and responsible child has an unalienable individual, civil, Constitutional, and human right to obtain, own, and carry, openly or concealed, any weapon -- rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything -- any time, any place, without asking anyone's permission.

-- L. Neil Smith

Reread that pesky first clause of the Second Amendment. It doesn't say what any of us thought it said. What it says is that infringing the right of the people to keep and bear arms is treason. What else do you call an act that endangers "the security of a free state"? And if it's treason, then it's punishable by death. I suggest due process, speedy trials, and public hangings.

-- L. Neil Smith

A Penalty Clause for the Bill of Rights

Any official, appointed or elected, at any level of government, who attempts, through legislative act or other means, to nullify, evade, or avoid the provisions of the first ten amendments to this Constitution, or of the Thirteenth Amendment, shall be summarily removed from office, and, upon conviction, deprived of all pay and benefits including pension, and sentenced to imprisonment for life.

-- L. Neil Smith

Based on 253 journal articles, 99 books, 43 government publications, and some of its own empirical work, the panel couldn't identify a single gun control regulation that reduced violent crime, suicide or accidents.

-- John Lott, commenting on the National Academy of Sciences report on gun control laws.

Who is a libertarian?

Zero Aggression Principle ("Zap")

"A libertarian is a person who believes that no one has the right, under any circumstances, to initiate force against another human being, or to advocate or delegate its initiation. Those who act consistently with this principle are libertarians, whether they realize it or not. Those who fail to act consistently with it are not libertarians, regardless of what they may claim."

-- L. Neil Smith

(Formerly called the "Non-Aggression Principle", or "NAP")

Why Did It Have to be... Guns?

Make no mistake: all politicians -- even those ostensibly on the side of guns and gun ownership -- hate the issue and anyone, like me, who insists on bringing it up. They hate it because it's an X-ray machine. It's a Vulcan mind-meld. It's the ultimate test to which any politician -- or political philosophy -- can be put.

If a politician isn't perfectly comfortable with the idea of his average constituent, any man, woman, or responsible child, walking into a hardware store and paying cash -- for any rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything -- without producing ID or signing one scrap of paper, he isn't your friend no matter what he tells you.

If he isn't genuinely enthusiastic about his average constituent stuffing that weapon into a purse or pocket or tucking it under a coat and walking home without asking anybody's permission, he's a four-flusher, no matter what he claims.

What his attitude -- toward your ownership and use of weapons -- conveys is his real attitude about you. And if he doesn't trust you, then why in the name of John Moses Browning should you trust him?

-- L. Neil Smith

Concise

"Tell me," I was once asked, "What do you think about gun control? Give me the short answer." To which I replied, "If you try to take our firearms we will kill you."

-- Mike Vanderboegh

Also from The Atlanta Declaration:

... like going to the bathroom, breathing, eating, sleeping, or making love, it turns out that self-defense is a bodily function one cannot safely or effectively delegate to a second party.

-- L. Neil Smith

This does not mean that "Marijuana should be available by prescription." It means that morphine sulfate should be available in five pound bags at the supermarket for a couple of bucks, like sugar... but probably in a different aisle, to avoid confusion.

-- Vin Suprynowicz

If you refuse to pay unjust taxes, your property will be confiscated. If you attempt to defend your property, you will be arrested. If you resist arrest, you will be clubbed. If you defend yourself against clubbing, you will be shot dead. These procedures are known as the Rule of Law.

-- Edward Abbey

The state can only survive as long as a majority is programmed to believe that theft isn't wrong if it's called taxation or asset forfeiture or eminent domain, that assault and kidnapping isn't wrong if it's called arrest, that mass murder isn't wrong if it's called war.

-- Bill St. Clair